Posts Tagged ‘Sarah Kaplan’

The article in the 21 January 2017 issue of the Washington Post by Sarah Kaplan titled “New group encourages scientists to enter politics” was good news. STEM the Divide is a group that will push to have more scientists involved in politics. This initiative was set up by the political action committee 314 Action. The goal is to connect people with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and math to the expertise and money needed to run a successful campaign. The article stated that scientists who have been interested in getting into politics were rarely encouraged and sometimes discouraged.

Shaughnessy Naughton is the founder of this organization. When asked whether this raised a risk of politicizing science—framing scientific questions as ideological questions, rather than matters of fact—Naughton argued that that ship has already sailed. Her response follows: “People might think that science is above politics, as it should be, but increasingly we see that politics is not above bringing itself into science. At a certain point, there’s diminishing returns to not getting involved.” HM would change “diminishing returns” to “serious existential dangers.”

Moreover, the question she was posed, “framing scientific questions as ideological issues, rather than as matters of fact,” betrays the erroneous concept that science is simply a bunch of facts. Science can be an ideology, an ideology that should provide the basis for governing. Science is not a monolithic entity, but rather a set of methodologies devoted to arriving at truth in the various disciplines. This truth is arrived at by reasoning and data. Moreover, it is fluid in that as circumstances or facts change, truth is corrected or refined. Science provides the basis for our standard of living, and it can be argued that social problems are due to the failure to apply scientific approaches to social problems.

A good example of this is medical care in the United States. Medical care in the United States is the most expensive in the world, with results suitable for a third world country. All other advanced countries provide superior medical care for all their citizens at a fraction of the costs in the United States. The Affordable Care Act was the best that could be done given the political environment. One party wants either to exclude the federal government entirely or severely limit its participation due to ideology. They use fear, lies, and misinformation to destroy attempts to bring the United States into line with the truly advanced countries of the world.

A good question is why this is the case. The general argument is against big government. Any argument about the size of government without considering the question of what the government can best do versus what private industry can best do is moronic. Yet it is repeated ad nauseum.

People say that they are followers of Reaganism with great pride. Ronald Reagan is also regarded as a great communicator, which he was. But what is overlooked is the reason his ideas were so easy to communicate is that they were so simple. Reagan demanded that his staff provide brief descriptions of the issues so he could formulate brief descriptions of his policy.

The problem is that simple ideas do not adequately solve complex problems. For example, people will say that they believe in free markets. One would be hard pressed to find many economists who do not believe in free markets, but they also realize that free markets do not remain free for long. They are manipulated and monopolies emerge. The manipulations achieve a variety of ends, one being the financial collapse of 2008.

Moreover, there are always complaints about the excessive regulations that come from big government. Just think back over time and consider what life would be like without government regulations. How long would the work week be? What would salaries be without the minimum wage? If these are exclusively left to “market forces” they would leave the majority of people in misery. Were it not for unions, it is quite likely that Marx’s prediction of the revolution of the proletariat would have occurred. But Marx’s analysis was superficial and did not consider the possibility of workers organizing to achieve a decent wage and working conditions.

Government regulations have also goaded businesses into actions that benefited them. Gas mileage standards is an example. And God protect us from what the atmosphere would be like absent government regulations. One of the costs that decreased the competitiveness of the US Auto Industry in the international market, were the costs of medical insurance. Had medical insurance been provided by the government, the industry would have been more competitive. Their ideology acted against their business interests.

One of the most disturbing actions that Trump has promised to undertake is the dismantling of financial regulations taken to prevent another market collapse. It should be obvious by now that the financial industry does not self regulate. Smart manipulators cash in, while everyone else in the country and the country itself collapses.

The argument here is not that business is evil and government is good. There are ample examples of government being a monster. The reality is that the individual citizen stands between two giants, business and government. Either one can step on and crush the individual citizen. The citizen needs to be watchful of both and play each against the other to get the best result.

How should this be done? By employing science, conducting research, and analyzing data to decide what policies are, and who should do what. This does not guarantee a good result, but science is self correcting. So when something does not work, the reason why it didn’t work will be studied, and new approaches will be developed and evaluated.

The fundamental problem is with the individual voter. Thee is ample evidence that voters do not vote in their own interest. See the healthy memory blog post, “The Low Information Electorate.” It is also true that voters are governed by their emotions rather than carefully considered opinions. Previous posts have argued that decisions of most people are governed by their guts, which are System 1 processes. That certainly is the best explanation of the results of the 2016 presidential election. People need to invoke their System 2 processes. System 2 processes require cognitive effort. The vernacular term for them is thinking. Entering “System 1” or “System 2” or “Kahneman” into the healthymemory blog search block should yield ample posts on this topic.